Communications: e-Democracy and Open Government

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Why some top-down (G2G) approaches have failed?

Government operated projects have limited impact on government decision-making, often result in general criticism, have problems with effective management by public service.

May be mere service delivery

Simply perceived as insubstantial spin

Citizen participation is a fig leaf for goverment

Process of impacting on gov desicions unclear

Why some bottom-up (C2C) approaches have failed?

Some of them are not representative, have good functionality but have limited take-up by target community.

May generate open an engaged debate

Often only by usual suspects

Perceptino of inherent bias, unrepresentative community

Unable to match the clout of eswtablishede lobby groups

Too distant from politicdal actors to be recognised

Towards G4C2C

Desirable qualities for citizen consultation:

Government support and recognition

Independent and flexible operation and management

Distant enough to allow real community development

Close enough for outcomes to be accepted as meaningful

Government support for citizen-to-citizen initiatives: the government is involved, but not directly promoting, but supporting:

Hybrid model combining g2c and c2c aspects

Government-supported, but at arms’ length from government

Public service broadcasting approach

Participation by citizens as well as politicians and officials

cf. “Civic Commons 2.0″ (Coleman & Blumler, 2009): a space of intersecting networks, pulled together through the agency of a democratically connecting institution, raises questions about the scale of such a project.

The Expressive Turn of Political Participation and Citizenship in the Digital AgeJakob Svensson, Karlstad University

If you can’t see the presentation please visit http://ictlogy.net/?p=3344

Is a democracy sustainable without participation? What do we mean by the “political”?

Concerns of the organization and structure of society

The relationships of power, distribution and equity

Discursive and relational

Characteristics of the late modernity:

dispersion of cultural frameworks

Individualization

The network and the digital

Sub-politics and life-politics

Instrumental rationality: why participate if I’m getting anything in exchange? why engage citizens if costs are higher than benefits? And if participation is good/better for anyone, then why people do not participate?

Expressive rationality

“Expressive preferences” (Brennan) are not the same thing as “market preferences”: self-realization, processes of identification, networked individualism, etc.

Participation as an act of identity expression, participation provides participants with meaning.

Do Facebook and Video Games promote political Participation among Youth? Evidence from SingaporeMarko M. Skoric and Grace Kwan, Nanyang Technological University

Is there any relationship between using these emerging platforms for online sociability and entertainment, and political participation among young Singaporeans. See if these platforms are “third places” (Oldenburg) where they hang out and eventually participate.

While traditional media are quite controlled in Singapore, the Internet is not, so freedom of speech is almost guaranteed. There are also weak civic traditions.

There are some examples where social media have been used to impact the traditional media, by starting protests online, taking them offline (organizing online an offline protest) and then hitting and appearing in mainstream media, once (or during) the offline event has taken place.

Do intensive usage of Facebook and intensive gaming has an impact in (a) traditional participation or (b) online participation? Is there a relationship between online and offline participation?

Findings

Being a Facebook is slightly correlated with participation in politics

Intensity of usage is correlated with in both online and traditional participation

Gaming alone is not related with participation

But civic game-playing is correlated with participation

And online and offline participation are also correlated

Facebook use and video gaming linked with both online and offline participation

Online participation as a driver of traditional participation

(increased) Importance of attention to political/public affairs news in traditional media, even for online participation